Pakistan International Airlines has drawn widespread criticism for publishing an advertisement showing a plane flying towards the Eiffel Tower.
The advertisement was intended to promote the resumption of PIA's flights to the French capital and had the caption “Paris, we are coming today.”
Some social media users noted the ad's similarity to the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001.
“Is this an advertisement or a threat?” one user wrote on X. Another called on the company to “fire your CMO.”
The photo has been viewed more than 21 million times on X since it was posted last week, and sparked swift backlash.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif ordered an investigation into the matter, while Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar also criticized the announcement, Pakistan's Geo News reported.
the 9/11 attacks Hijackers witnessed passenger planes crash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., killing nearly 3,000 people.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the attacks in Pakistan in 2003, was arrested.
Osama bin Laden, the leader of the extremist Al Qaeda network that planned the attacks, was killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011.
Pakistani journalist Omar Qureshi said the PIA announcement left him “truly speechless”.
“Didn't the airline management check this?
“Didn't they know about the tragedy of September 11 – in which planes were used to attack buildings? Didn't they think this would be viewed in a similar way,” he wrote on X.
The airline did not comment on the incident.
However, PIA is no stranger to controversy.
Some X users pointed out that in 1979, the airline ran an ad showing the shadow of an airliner above the Twin Towers.
In 2017, the airline was subjected to taunts from employees Sacrificing a goat to ward off bad luck After one of the worst weather disasters in the country.
In 2019, PIA caused an uproar when it asked flight attendants to downsize or stop flying. Employees were told they had six months to lose “excess weight.”
